


The Fell Dragon Informs Her Parole Officer Of Her Recent Affairs

by Benfrosh



Series: A Dragon Among Heroes [8]
Category: Fire Emblem Heroes
Genre: (singing voice) what do you do with a repentant war criminal early in the morning, Gen, i'm not a therapist neither is tiki please do not take the narration as binding therapeutic advice, implied grima/olivia continuining from my previous works, write a fic series til it's over~ write a fic series til it's over~
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-10-14 07:05:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17503907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Benfrosh/pseuds/Benfrosh
Summary: Grima feels like she's changed, a lot. And Tiki, the one who's insisted this would happen more than anyone else, has the right to know about it. But it takes a lot of confidence, even for someone as powerful as the Fell Dragon, to open up like that.





	The Fell Dragon Informs Her Parole Officer Of Her Recent Affairs

Tiki slept. It had taken her a lot of practice to be able to do that - the first few thousand times she had always been startled awake by horrible nightmares, fears of centuries passing in a moment. She got used to it, though - now she even enjoyed the rest. That just made it all the worse when, like now, she was woken up from a nice relaxing nap by someone who clearly did not respect her personal time. "Go away," she mumbled from the depths of her blanket pile. 

"Tiki? Are you there?" someone outside asked, muffled by the door.

"Might be." She groggily rubbed her eyes as she rose from her pillow. "Is it important?"

"Yes, of course I'm-" came Grima's raised voice from the other side of the door, before she cut herself off. "It can wait if need be, but I was hoping for some of your time, to discuss some... personal matters."

Tiki considered her options. Sure, Grima represented one of the few possible hopes for the future of dragonkind, and sure, winning Grima over and helping figure out how to use her path of personal growth to help other dragons was her number one priority here in Askr, but also she was _extremely_ sleepy still. In the end, however, Tiki's mature half won over her childlike desires, and she rose up from her sleep(still wearing her clothes for the day, not having bothered to change before 'just a quick nap'). "You can open the door, Grima, it's not locked." she replied as she straightened herself out, seated on the bed.

The door creaked open, and Grima stepped through. Tiki couldn't help but do a snap inspection of Grima as she stepped in. Her normally unfastened coat was buttoned up today, and it was cold in the castle - a sign that Grima was starting to pay attention to the signals from her body? Her hair wasn't in the usual pigtails, but instead done up in a ponytail - did she care about how she appeared to other people now? Her cheek was -

Was that _lipstick_ on there?

Tiki stared as Grima pulled up a chair from the side of the room to Tiki's bedside. "I'm sorry to interrupt, it's just... I've been working up the confidence to tell you this, and if I don't do it now I may not for some time."

Tiki made no reply, instead merely raising a finger to her own cheek. "You, uh. You've got something on there."

Grima, startled, reached up to her cheek and felt the lipstick mark left on there. She let out a small laugh. "Well, that says it for me, then."

"So you, and Olivia?" Tiki asked, pointing for emphasis. "It's official, then?"

Grima nodded. "As official as any romance between a human and a dragon could be."

"What did it? What made you fall in love with a human?"

Grima, to Tiki's amazement, blushed. "Must I share it with you? It's been an emotional journey to get here."

"No, no, it's fine, it's just..." Tiki rubbed her hand through her hair. "It was just a few years ago you tried to wipe out all of humanity. I expected it to take centuries to even get you _used_ to humans, let alone in love with one."

"Well, I am the Fell Dragon, after all. Of course I'll excel."

Tiki smiled. "That pride never will go away, will it?"

Grima scoffed. "I hope not. Enough of me has changed, I don't want to lose everything I had."

Tiki nodded, but her focus drifted from Grima as she became lost in thought. "So why tell me this?"

"You told me yourself. Your goal was my 'rehabilitation' so I could live among humans. Now I'm a new dragon."

"Are you, though?"

"I'm sorry?" Grima looked around mockingly. "Did I make the wrong impression on you before? I'm pretty sure I said I would lay waste to the world when I got here."

"Yeah, and now you say otherwise."

Grima stared. "Are you accusing me of lying-"

"No, no, that's not it. But don't pretend you're above that."

Grima cackled. "I concede the point, but not about this. I wouldn't open myself up like this to you - to Olivia - if I wasn't sincere about it."

"It's just..." Tiki trailed off. "Well, pardon me for being harsh, but you've always been incredibly selfish. Focused on what's best for you, using other people like tools, trying to get ahead by any means."

Grima opened her mouth to make reply, but bit down her words before they could escape. Tiki made a note of that as well.

"So even if right now you're saying that it's all good now, you've promised not to kill anyone, you've turned a new leaf, how am I supposed to react? You have everything you've ever wanted right now. Power, respect, a new lease on life. What will you do when that goes away? When the war with Embla ends, and the Order is dissolved, what will you do? Give up power, or launch another bloody conquest? When Olivia dies in seventy, eighty, years, how will you react? I don't just want a brief period of peace. If that's all I wanted, I'd just kill you again and deal with the problem in another few thousand years. What I want is to be able to trust you, Grima. And a brief dalliance of love isn't enough for that."

Tiki expected Grima to completely snap at that. To make some quick reply, dripping in venom and hate, or to make some proud assertion that her word was inviolate, or even to just reveal that yes, this was all a plot to make Tiki drop her guard while Grima positioned herself for another attempt at world domination. And yet - none of those happened. Instead, Grima sat quietly in thought, her hand stroking her chin as she stared pensively past Tiki. 

"How do we know _you_ aren't going to lead a bloody coup?" Grima finally asked.

Tiki blinked. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me. You too have been given power and respect here. Why do we not suspect you of killing to keep it?"

"Because that's not... what I do? I don't really see the point."

"You've killed people before, though. When brainwashed by Gharnef, if I recall."

Tiki's eyes narrowed in anger. "Yes, and I've regretted that my entire life. And I was _brainwashed_ -"

Grima motioned Tiki to calm down. "I'm sorry, I meant no offense in the matter. I just want to say - Marth trusted you then, and worked to save you, and became your friend. What differs between your story and mine? And I'm not trying to say 'you're no better than me', this is an intentionally leading question."

"Good, because I've had enough of that from cheap novels already. One, I had people willing to vouch for my good character who Marth trusted due to their uniformly good actions, in Bantu and Xane. You have no one who says you weren't a villain, because the only person who knew you before that was your creator... who tried to murder you. Hm."

"Again, not trying to say I'm innocent, I've done bad things, but you see the challenges I'm going through."

"Two, I wasn't acting under my own will. You decided to kill everyone yourself..." Tiki said, trailing off. If her theory was right though, and the madness affecting the dragons is what affected Grima as well, then...

"That's the rub, isn't it? The question of will. Did I choose to hate humanity, or is it an artifact of my innate being?" Grima asked rhetorically. Tiki nodded, hoping to smooth past the fact that she probably knew exactly why. "And if it is an artifact, and one I now find inconvenient, how can I demonstrate that to others? To you?"

Tiki hummed in thought. "Well, what's your goal here? If it's just to choose to be a good person, that's up to how you perceive yourself. I'll gladly help with that, but you telling me all this isn't going to help that one iota. I have to ask - why are you coming here and baring this all to me?"

Grima didn't answer, and the two sat in a silence Tiki let be. She hadn't yet told Grima her true goal. Only she and Lucina knew that, and Lucina was only due to grave psychological danger. She absolutely did not want to taint Grima's path to recovering from villainy - it had to be pure and driven entirely by Grima wanting to be good. She didn't want to make Grima feel unloved or untrusted and send her scurrying back to the dark side, but at the same time she didn't want to luck into a friendly Grima and be betrayed by someone else down the road. If she wanted to use Grima's reincarnation magic to save the other dragons from corruption, then she had to be absolutely sure that it worked on Grima. And Grima was, as a result, going to have to jump through hoops to prove it, even while Tiki dearly wanted to believe that Grima had changed.

"I suppose it's because," Grima answered, carefully enunciating each word as her thoughts caught up to her, "I wanted someone to believe in me."

"... Really?" Tiki asked.

"Yes. I came to you because I knew you wanted to see me become a good person. I wanted to show you that you were right, that I could change. When you said that you didn't believe me, that really got to me, because... it's scary, doing this. I don't know if I'm changing, either. I'm still figuring out if I want to be. All I know is that I'm finally happy here, like this, and I want to keep being happy."

Tiki felt a tear roll down her cheek, and stood up from the bed to pull Grima into a big hug, causing her to tense up. "I believe you, Grima."

"W-what's this for? I haven't proved anything," Grima asked, as she eventually returned the hug.

Tiki gave her a reassuring squeeze before pulling back. "Because I don't know if you're a good person or not, but now I _do_ know that you want to be. And with that certainty I'm going to be there to help you with that." And because Tiki had just realized her approach was wrong. No magic can make someone be a good person and be kind to others if their kindness is never accepted. If she wanted Grima to make sustainable relationships with others, the easiest way was to _be_ that sustainable relationship. And from there, the two of them would just have to rebuild a society of trust among the dragons, step by step.

"... thank you," Grima finally whispered. "Gods, it's embarrassing to talk so much about this."

"Thank you, Grima. For showing that I was right to hope."

Grima smiled, but it quickly soured into a frown. "I'm going to have to do this again with Chrom and the Robins, aren't I?"

Tiki smiled in return. "You definitely will. You've done a lot of horrible things, Grima, and if you want to move on from them you have a _lot_ of apologizing to do."

Grima laughed tiredly. "I suppose I should just count my blessings I got my second chance. Not many do."

Tiki scoffed. "Have you seen Chrom's army? He'll trust anyone that isn't actively stabbing him. You'll be fine."

**Author's Note:**

> Since I don't have an idea for a full fic, here's a snippet of a similar conversation Olivia is having with Hinoka:
> 
> "So what do you even see in her anyways? Isn't she, like, a horrible monster?" 
> 
> "Well, one," Olivia counted as she downed another swig of beer, "she's getting help for that and is trying to become a better person, and that's a turn-on. Two, she's ludicrously hot when she's covered in blood and sweat and offering me a rose, so it's hard to resist that." 
> 
> "Yeah, that makes sense."
> 
> "And three, it turns out she is a *tiger* in bed." 
> 
> Hinoka sighed wistfully. "Yeah, sounds like you have what I had. Here's to being addicted to powerful lesbians," she toasted. 
> 
> Olivia laughed and joined the toast, before letting out a sigh of her own.


End file.
